Sandy Shuts Down Wall Street

Hurricane Sandy, the monster
storm bearing down on the U.S. East Coast, strengthened on
Monday after hundreds of thousands moved to higher ground,
public transport shut down and the U.S. stock market suffered
its first weather-related closure in 27 years.

Hurricane Sandy, the monster
storm bearing down on the U.S. East Coast, strengthened on
Monday after hundreds of thousands moved to higher ground,
public transport shut down and the U.S. stock market suffered
its first weather-related closure in 27 years.

About 50 million people from the Mid-Atlantic to Canada were
in the path of the nearly 1,000-mile-wide (1,600-km-wide) storm,
which forecasters said could be the largest to hit the mainland
in U.S. history. It was expected to topple trees, damage
buildings, cause power outages and trigger heavy flooding.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said on Monday the
Category 1 storm had strengthened as it turned toward the coast
and was moving at 20 miles per hour (32 km per hour). It was
expected to bring a "life-threatening storm surge," coastal
hurricane winds and heavy snow in the Appalachian Mountains, the
NHC said.

Nine U.S. states have declared states of emergency, and with
the U.S. election eight days away President Barack Obama
canceled a campaign event in Florida on Monday in order to
return to Washington and monitor the U.S. government's response
to the storm.

"This is a serious and big storm," Obama said on Sunday
after a briefing at the federal government's storm response
center in Washington. "We don't yet know where it's going to
hit, where we're going to see the biggest
impacts."

Sandy killed 66 people in the Caribbean last week before
pounding U.S. coastal areas with rain and triggering snow falls
at higher elevations as it moved north.

Forecasting services indicated early Monday the center of
the storm would strike the New Jersey shore near Atlantic City
on Monday night. While Sandy does not pack the punch of
Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005, it
could become more potent as it approaches the U.S. coast.

Winds were at a maximum of 85 mph (140 kph), the NHC said in
its 8 a.m. (1200 GMT) report, up from 75 mph (120 kph) six hours
earlier. It said tropical storm-force winds reached as far as
485 miles (780 km) from the center.

Seventeen people from the replica HMS Bounty abandoned ship
while stranded at sea off North Carolina in the path of the
hurricane, roughly 160 miles (260 km) from the center of storm,
the U.S. Coast Guard said on Monday.

"The 17-person crew donned cold water survival suits and
lifejackets before launching in two 25-man lifeboats with
canopies," the Coast Guard said, adding it was determining which
aircraft or vessel was best-placed to launch a rescue.

The three-masted tall ship was built for the 1962 movie
"Mutiny on the Bounty."

New York and other cities and towns closed their transit
systems and ordered mass evacuations from low-lying areas ahead
of a storm surge that could reach as high as 11 feet (3.4
meters).

All U.S. stock markets will be closed on Monday and possibly
Tuesday, the operator of the New York Stock Exchange said late
on Sunday, reversing an earlier plan that would have kept
electronic trading going on Monday.

The United Nations, Broadway theaters, New Jersey casinos,
schools up and down the Eastern Seaboard, and myriad corporate
events were also being shut down.